"They just made a sequel, twenty plus years later, in 2023."
That really does sum up our entire popular culture at this point, doesn't it, haha. Anyway, I had no idea Schneider started out as an actor. Looking forward to seeing where you'll go with this series. Would it be a reach to say he's kind of the Joss Whedon of kid-coms? As in, he has a very specific style, and the same fixation with quippy dialogue and character interactions? Then again, I guess almost every TV and movie writer does these days.
I've never seen much of his stuff myself, just a few brief glimpses years ago when I happened to catch it on broadcast TV, but I know of him peripherally. And of course there's been some attention around the memoir by the girl who played the blonde sidekick on iCarly and apparently hated her time on the show. I guess we'll get to that in due time too.
Since I'm interested in what makes good children's media, it'll be interesting to hear your take on the content of his shows, even if I suspect it'll be more about the meta story of his rise (and fall?). I've not seen enough of them to tell if his shows were successful because they actually had some personality or more due to cynical tricks, but, well, I have my suspicions...
I wouldn't say the Joss Whedon comparison is inaccurate, both in terms of his distinct approach to directing and the fact that they both made a shit ton of content over the course of their careers. They both are also currently persona non grata in the industry due to impropriety and bad behavior, too. Curious.
We'll definitely get to Jeanette McCurdy's story when it comes time, too. I read her book last year and, at the time, I really wanted to write about it. However, it was good that I waited, since the story of Schneider and Nickelodeon has resurfaced in the zeitgeist thanks to a documentary we will also get to, and the conversation has since shifted dramatically. And not in a good way.
I think that's the third time you've mentioned Frasier, so I hope sometime you'll share your thoughts on it. It frustrates me, because it's so well made and has a lot of great father-son and brothers stuff, but it's also very 90s with everything that implies.
Of those 80s shows you mentioned, Cheers and Magnum are both genuinely worth watching. Cheers is where Frasier came from, of course, and it's a bit like a blue-collar Frasier in a way, with smart writing, especially in the early seasons.
Magnum is just great. People remember the car and the 'stache and the bikini babes, but it also has a serious through-line based on Magnum's past in the military and his refusal to grow up for a long time, and there's a lot of great manly-comrades stuff between the four men.
I mentioned Frasier, like, once before in passing, but it is one of the only sitcoms I can say I truly, genuinely enjoyed. A big part of it was Niles, to be totally honest. I understand what you mean by 90's, but one of the most fascinating things about the show - which I intend to revisit, at some point, to write about - is that the image of Seattle it gave me was very different from the Seattle I frequent today. You know. Educated. Urbane. Cutting-edge. Tech companies. A lot of grunge, too, but, in all the time I've been in Seattle, both the upper-crust techie community and the gutter trash punk/grunge scene are hollowed out parodies of what they used to be. It reminds me a lot of Austin, where I used to live for a couple years - a place that priced out all the authentic culture and is selling a watered down, skim-milk alternative at an inflated price. Terribly depressing because, like Austin, I imagine it was a great place to be twenty years ago, and even just tolerable ten years ago. But no more.
If I do a retrospective on Frasier, I'll watch Cheers to get some background. I've heard a lot of praise for it from my parent's generation, but I just never had the time or interest in watching much of it. I only remember Magnum through bits and pieces I caught while channel flipping, but when it comes to manly guys with bikini babes, I've always been drawn to the aesthetic of Miami Vice. Degenerate as Miami in that time was, the aesthetics of art deco, neon, and those pastel suits... gets me every time. In my real life, though, I dress much closer to Magnum :P
It's always a bad day when I get to be reminded of how much of my childhood I wasted watching "Wings." And then you go and remind me that I've watched "Perfect Strangers" and "Head of the Class." It's not that I'm getting old - I am, and I am comfortable with that fact.
It's the reminder of how many precious seconds I've wasted on absolute dogshit. It's my fault for watching this crap. Why didn't I know better? Why didn't my parents know better?
Rest assured, I feel the exact same way. Especially in the future installments, where I realize I know way too much about all the shows that we're going to talk about. Even the ones I didn't like. But I don't think we can be held responsible. I, for one, was one of those kids who wasn't allowed to go out and play without parental supervision (explains a lot, doesn't it?), so, I mean... what else was I to do? I didn't know any better. Our parents, too, were following cultural trends dominant at the time. In a way, we all shoulder some blame, but I think we're all also victims of macro-societal trends, as well.
This is also something I've wrestled with, when it comes to video games in particular. I spent so much of my childhood on these things, and even if I cherish the memories and am glad I got the experience the good ones in one sense, I also can't help wonder what it'd have been like if I'd had a more traditional, outdoorsy childhood instead. I did get a little bit of that, but not nearly as much as those who grew up just a decade or two before me, in the 70s and 80s. Plus it made me stick with a lot of gaming well into my adult life, longer than I probably should have. I guess I can relate to many of our host's comments on this in another essay here.
So yeah, I get this for sure. I also agree with our host that it's also largely just a consequence of growing up in the kind of culture we did, at the height of the industrial arc. Or in other words: I think the 80s and 90s were probably the best times to have a modern, pop culture-based industrial chilhood, but I also can't help wonder sometimes if it wouldn't have been better to grow up in the woods and fields outside that era to begin with. Maybe it's just me being an old-ish grump, but I suspect kids today are getting the worst of both worlds.
Sounds like had a similar upbringing in that sense, which is why I wonder the same thing, occasionally. While I'm very rarely satisfied with how my life turned out, I do have to remind myself that, if nothing else, I'm not and never have been to jail, I'm not addicted to drugs, and I'm also able to support myself, which is a luxury an increasing number of people don't have. It's a cold comfort at times, but it's still better than the alternative.
I think kids today are certainly getting a demonstrably worse output of entertainment due to YouTube becoming the preeminent form of Children's entertainment and the introduction of hand-held computers as a stand-in for parents. There may have been bad children's entertainment during out childhood, but at least it was content. So much of what children engage with today is meaningless flashing lights and sounds with AI generated visuals or animations made for pennies by outsourced Indian serfs. It's complete and total nonsense, designed to distract and hold attention and do nothing else. I don't think it's unrealistic to believe that kind of shit absolutely melts the brain when its at its most plastic, and that iPad babies may grow up to be the least functional generation we've seen yet.
😂😂 we all loved it. It was like wrestling but with towing cars.
We also liked this show about a guy who owned a pawnshop but it was in some wealthy place and he had 3 beautiful assistants. Obviously we watched it for the pawning.
You reminded me that I could always get down on Pawn Stars. Another guilty pleasure. But the more I think about it, the only time I sit down and really watch any of these shows is A) with friends, usually in a hotel room in the downtime between travel or B) a girlfriend, usually late at night when both of us were winding down. Television has turned into like a spectator sport for me.
I've never heard of almost any of the shows you listed up there besides the really huge ones O.o Like, GoT, Supernatural, Frasier, Full House, Fresh Prince, sure. I am woefully aware that Shark Tank, etc. exist because my wife went through a reality TV phase when we lived in the sticks and our bandwidth wasn't good enough to watch youtube all day.
WTF is "All That"?
FTR, there are only five seasons of Supernatural. And I'd say they're pretty OK, especially the first two, if you calibrate your standards to network television settings.
As to anything that has dropped recently, it mostly falls into "so bad it's not worth watching" vs. "so bad it's good again." In the latter category, I enjoyed Paper Girls (yes, really) and Millennials in Spaaaaace! (real name: Another Life).
Fallout is a particularly big facepalm for me, because you could not possibly pick a concept that should have appealed to me more. I'm a post-apoc junkie - I've probably read every book you've ever heard of and watched every movie you've ever heard of in the genre, plus a bunch you haven't - and I've played and loved every real Fallout game (no, 76 and Shelter do not count).
But I could tell just from the trailer that they fucked it up. And then a friend with more patience than I told me all about it, and I heard how badly they fucked it up. Seriously would it kill the writers, show runners, and actors to spend just 72 hours of their lives playing/reading/watching the source material? Even if only so their parodic/satirical demakes would be on point in their desecration?
That's probably for the best. You really don't want to know most of these shows. They aren't worth knowing.
The thing about Fallout that's really getting me is the slavish praise it's recieving from almost every one I know who's seen it. From what hazy memories I recall of the first episode, it was competently made, yes, but that doesn't mean good. I should probably watch the whole thing - sober - before I make an assessment, but if I had to guess, I'm willing to bet the fact that it's competently made and did just enough things right to mirror the games put it so far above the other dreck on television that it looks great by comparison. When 99% of your competition is total dog shit, all you have to do is perform adequately to pull ahead of them. And that's definitely the vibes I get from Fallout. I'd also say that, clearly, they did a lot of research to accurately recreate the world and the iconography from it, but whether they capture the feel of the Fallout universe... that's a real good question. But, then again, after 76 - which, no, doesn't count, you're right - does even the canonical Fallout universe even feel like Fallout anymore?
The thing that killed me in the trailer was that its resemblance to Fallout was purely superficial. The bright, oversaturated palette, the wardrobe that looked straight off the shelf from Walmart, the weird and unnecessary pseudocatholic element they shoehorned into the brotherhood (were you guys thinking of Warhammer? That's a different universe). It looked like a commercial or music video, and demonstrated a basic lack of familiarity with the mood of the genre and of Fallout in particular.
In the show itself, they apparently fucked up right out the gate by not introducing the world through the eyes of the vault dweller, which is the one narrative device that is consistent throughout the series. This is something you could only miss had you no direct experience with or appreciation for the source material. It's like they got the setting bible and the concept art and proceeded from there, missing everything that is distinct about the franchise. Sounds like it was all downhill from there.
Also, what is even "the canonical Fallout universe"? I'll admit I never really got into that series, but I do know enough about classic 90s CRPGs to be familiar with it. Properly speaking, I'd say there's two of those universes: the original Interplay one from the late 90s plus New Vegas and the commercialized (read: "bastardized"?) modern Bethesda one. All I've seen from the outside gives me the impression Bethesda basically removed most of the thoughtful and clever elements in favor of the kind of lowest common denominator stuff this blog rightful tends to criticize.
Since we're on the subject, I also can't help take the opportunity to plug one of my absolute critique heroes and favorite internet personalities, the (sadly late) Shamus Young. He brought a very thorough analytical perspective with a lot of humor and warmth, while being merciless on crappy writing. If you haven't already, I think you and the readership here would enjoy his stuff. Especially his magnum opus on the Mass Effect series. On the theme of this post, though, he did this mini-series on modern Fallout: https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=27085
It's true, Bethesda failed to capture the dark humor and wit of the first two games. But it's Bethesda, writing has never been their strong suit. Where they are strong (or were, before the skinsuiting) is in building rich, immersive sandboxes, and in that sense their takes on Fallout were much stronger than the big empty of the CRPGs. I appreciated them both in different ways.
I had a lot of fun playing Fallout 3, New Vegas, and even 4, but the more you thought about any of their stories, the worse they got. Definitely "dumb fun" games.
Yeah Bethesda's games have always been very "make your own fun." But that is good for a sandbox game, and what I like about them. If I want a great story, I go elsewhere.
Arrow was a pretty good DC show on CW. Though, it definitely had its fair share of silly moments. Also, I really liked Fallout. The first couple episodes are a little uneven, but the show greatly improves as it goes on. At any rate, it got me playing (and enjoying) Fallout 76, which was heretofore an inconceivable prospect.
I'm willing to believe Arrow, being a relatively grounded character that's basically just a guy who's really good at archery (as far as I understand it), is probably the best DC CW show by virtue of not having to rely on scads of cheap CGI. Like, I had a lot of people tell me Flash was good but I just could not look past the horrible production quality. Maybe that's just me being a snob, but still.
I won't lie, I actually thought about doing the same, which is... saying a lot for the same reasons. Fortunately my lack of a gaming PC has kept me from indulging, but if I did have one, just being reminded of how much fun I had with the Bethesda Fallout games, imperfect as they are, makes me want to play them again.
I've heard of some of these shows like Full House, Supernatural, etc. but others not much. One show I do like watching reruns of is Little House on the Prairie. It's quite wholesome, especially compared to today's shows. Have you seen LHOTP?
I haven't, no. That was a little too before my time, but I do remember seeing reruns of it on TV Land, I think. I did read the books when I was a kid. I remember having the problem with them I had with most things at that time, which was that it didn't have enough aliens, spaceships, magic, wizards, and things like that to really hook me in. I'm sure both the show and the books are fine and were popular for a reason, but as a kid I was just too much of a sperg to get into it.
Also, while doing research, I did actually see that LHOTP has what's considered to be one of the most controversial endings to a sitcom in television history, which is like... how?
Spoilers obviously is because the plot involved blowing up the town so it wouldn't fall into the hands of a rich tycoon.
Real life reason was because the place where they filmed the outside scenes was on a farm and when they finished filming the land went back to the farm.
Okay... yeah, I can see how that would definitely piss people off. I would also say "blowing up the town" should be up there with "jumping the shark" in tv culture jargon.
I have not watched most of these, except Game of Thrones, and I agree with your assessment of that show. The rest I’ll take your word on! The paint by numbers phrase is brilliant, thank you for that and for this whole article which was educational and enjoyable to read. I do not know who Dan is, so I am excited for you to spill the beans next time.
"They just made a sequel, twenty plus years later, in 2023."
That really does sum up our entire popular culture at this point, doesn't it, haha. Anyway, I had no idea Schneider started out as an actor. Looking forward to seeing where you'll go with this series. Would it be a reach to say he's kind of the Joss Whedon of kid-coms? As in, he has a very specific style, and the same fixation with quippy dialogue and character interactions? Then again, I guess almost every TV and movie writer does these days.
I've never seen much of his stuff myself, just a few brief glimpses years ago when I happened to catch it on broadcast TV, but I know of him peripherally. And of course there's been some attention around the memoir by the girl who played the blonde sidekick on iCarly and apparently hated her time on the show. I guess we'll get to that in due time too.
Since I'm interested in what makes good children's media, it'll be interesting to hear your take on the content of his shows, even if I suspect it'll be more about the meta story of his rise (and fall?). I've not seen enough of them to tell if his shows were successful because they actually had some personality or more due to cynical tricks, but, well, I have my suspicions...
I wouldn't say the Joss Whedon comparison is inaccurate, both in terms of his distinct approach to directing and the fact that they both made a shit ton of content over the course of their careers. They both are also currently persona non grata in the industry due to impropriety and bad behavior, too. Curious.
We'll definitely get to Jeanette McCurdy's story when it comes time, too. I read her book last year and, at the time, I really wanted to write about it. However, it was good that I waited, since the story of Schneider and Nickelodeon has resurfaced in the zeitgeist thanks to a documentary we will also get to, and the conversation has since shifted dramatically. And not in a good way.
I think that's the third time you've mentioned Frasier, so I hope sometime you'll share your thoughts on it. It frustrates me, because it's so well made and has a lot of great father-son and brothers stuff, but it's also very 90s with everything that implies.
Of those 80s shows you mentioned, Cheers and Magnum are both genuinely worth watching. Cheers is where Frasier came from, of course, and it's a bit like a blue-collar Frasier in a way, with smart writing, especially in the early seasons.
Magnum is just great. People remember the car and the 'stache and the bikini babes, but it also has a serious through-line based on Magnum's past in the military and his refusal to grow up for a long time, and there's a lot of great manly-comrades stuff between the four men.
I mentioned Frasier, like, once before in passing, but it is one of the only sitcoms I can say I truly, genuinely enjoyed. A big part of it was Niles, to be totally honest. I understand what you mean by 90's, but one of the most fascinating things about the show - which I intend to revisit, at some point, to write about - is that the image of Seattle it gave me was very different from the Seattle I frequent today. You know. Educated. Urbane. Cutting-edge. Tech companies. A lot of grunge, too, but, in all the time I've been in Seattle, both the upper-crust techie community and the gutter trash punk/grunge scene are hollowed out parodies of what they used to be. It reminds me a lot of Austin, where I used to live for a couple years - a place that priced out all the authentic culture and is selling a watered down, skim-milk alternative at an inflated price. Terribly depressing because, like Austin, I imagine it was a great place to be twenty years ago, and even just tolerable ten years ago. But no more.
If I do a retrospective on Frasier, I'll watch Cheers to get some background. I've heard a lot of praise for it from my parent's generation, but I just never had the time or interest in watching much of it. I only remember Magnum through bits and pieces I caught while channel flipping, but when it comes to manly guys with bikini babes, I've always been drawn to the aesthetic of Miami Vice. Degenerate as Miami in that time was, the aesthetics of art deco, neon, and those pastel suits... gets me every time. In my real life, though, I dress much closer to Magnum :P
It's always a bad day when I get to be reminded of how much of my childhood I wasted watching "Wings." And then you go and remind me that I've watched "Perfect Strangers" and "Head of the Class." It's not that I'm getting old - I am, and I am comfortable with that fact.
It's the reminder of how many precious seconds I've wasted on absolute dogshit. It's my fault for watching this crap. Why didn't I know better? Why didn't my parents know better?
Rest assured, I feel the exact same way. Especially in the future installments, where I realize I know way too much about all the shows that we're going to talk about. Even the ones I didn't like. But I don't think we can be held responsible. I, for one, was one of those kids who wasn't allowed to go out and play without parental supervision (explains a lot, doesn't it?), so, I mean... what else was I to do? I didn't know any better. Our parents, too, were following cultural trends dominant at the time. In a way, we all shoulder some blame, but I think we're all also victims of macro-societal trends, as well.
This is also something I've wrestled with, when it comes to video games in particular. I spent so much of my childhood on these things, and even if I cherish the memories and am glad I got the experience the good ones in one sense, I also can't help wonder what it'd have been like if I'd had a more traditional, outdoorsy childhood instead. I did get a little bit of that, but not nearly as much as those who grew up just a decade or two before me, in the 70s and 80s. Plus it made me stick with a lot of gaming well into my adult life, longer than I probably should have. I guess I can relate to many of our host's comments on this in another essay here.
So yeah, I get this for sure. I also agree with our host that it's also largely just a consequence of growing up in the kind of culture we did, at the height of the industrial arc. Or in other words: I think the 80s and 90s were probably the best times to have a modern, pop culture-based industrial chilhood, but I also can't help wonder sometimes if it wouldn't have been better to grow up in the woods and fields outside that era to begin with. Maybe it's just me being an old-ish grump, but I suspect kids today are getting the worst of both worlds.
Sounds like had a similar upbringing in that sense, which is why I wonder the same thing, occasionally. While I'm very rarely satisfied with how my life turned out, I do have to remind myself that, if nothing else, I'm not and never have been to jail, I'm not addicted to drugs, and I'm also able to support myself, which is a luxury an increasing number of people don't have. It's a cold comfort at times, but it's still better than the alternative.
I think kids today are certainly getting a demonstrably worse output of entertainment due to YouTube becoming the preeminent form of Children's entertainment and the introduction of hand-held computers as a stand-in for parents. There may have been bad children's entertainment during out childhood, but at least it was content. So much of what children engage with today is meaningless flashing lights and sounds with AI generated visuals or animations made for pennies by outsourced Indian serfs. It's complete and total nonsense, designed to distract and hold attention and do nothing else. I don't think it's unrealistic to believe that kind of shit absolutely melts the brain when its at its most plastic, and that iPad babies may grow up to be the least functional generation we've seen yet.
When I was serving on my last ship, our mess's TV guilty pleasure was Lizard Lick Towing lol.
I completely forgot about that show. I think I watched it exclusively in hotel rooms with my friends, like we did with Shark Tank.
😂😂 we all loved it. It was like wrestling but with towing cars.
We also liked this show about a guy who owned a pawnshop but it was in some wealthy place and he had 3 beautiful assistants. Obviously we watched it for the pawning.
You reminded me that I could always get down on Pawn Stars. Another guilty pleasure. But the more I think about it, the only time I sit down and really watch any of these shows is A) with friends, usually in a hotel room in the downtime between travel or B) a girlfriend, usually late at night when both of us were winding down. Television has turned into like a spectator sport for me.
I've never heard of almost any of the shows you listed up there besides the really huge ones O.o Like, GoT, Supernatural, Frasier, Full House, Fresh Prince, sure. I am woefully aware that Shark Tank, etc. exist because my wife went through a reality TV phase when we lived in the sticks and our bandwidth wasn't good enough to watch youtube all day.
WTF is "All That"?
FTR, there are only five seasons of Supernatural. And I'd say they're pretty OK, especially the first two, if you calibrate your standards to network television settings.
As to anything that has dropped recently, it mostly falls into "so bad it's not worth watching" vs. "so bad it's good again." In the latter category, I enjoyed Paper Girls (yes, really) and Millennials in Spaaaaace! (real name: Another Life).
Fallout is a particularly big facepalm for me, because you could not possibly pick a concept that should have appealed to me more. I'm a post-apoc junkie - I've probably read every book you've ever heard of and watched every movie you've ever heard of in the genre, plus a bunch you haven't - and I've played and loved every real Fallout game (no, 76 and Shelter do not count).
But I could tell just from the trailer that they fucked it up. And then a friend with more patience than I told me all about it, and I heard how badly they fucked it up. Seriously would it kill the writers, show runners, and actors to spend just 72 hours of their lives playing/reading/watching the source material? Even if only so their parodic/satirical demakes would be on point in their desecration?
That's probably for the best. You really don't want to know most of these shows. They aren't worth knowing.
The thing about Fallout that's really getting me is the slavish praise it's recieving from almost every one I know who's seen it. From what hazy memories I recall of the first episode, it was competently made, yes, but that doesn't mean good. I should probably watch the whole thing - sober - before I make an assessment, but if I had to guess, I'm willing to bet the fact that it's competently made and did just enough things right to mirror the games put it so far above the other dreck on television that it looks great by comparison. When 99% of your competition is total dog shit, all you have to do is perform adequately to pull ahead of them. And that's definitely the vibes I get from Fallout. I'd also say that, clearly, they did a lot of research to accurately recreate the world and the iconography from it, but whether they capture the feel of the Fallout universe... that's a real good question. But, then again, after 76 - which, no, doesn't count, you're right - does even the canonical Fallout universe even feel like Fallout anymore?
The thing that killed me in the trailer was that its resemblance to Fallout was purely superficial. The bright, oversaturated palette, the wardrobe that looked straight off the shelf from Walmart, the weird and unnecessary pseudocatholic element they shoehorned into the brotherhood (were you guys thinking of Warhammer? That's a different universe). It looked like a commercial or music video, and demonstrated a basic lack of familiarity with the mood of the genre and of Fallout in particular.
In the show itself, they apparently fucked up right out the gate by not introducing the world through the eyes of the vault dweller, which is the one narrative device that is consistent throughout the series. This is something you could only miss had you no direct experience with or appreciation for the source material. It's like they got the setting bible and the concept art and proceeded from there, missing everything that is distinct about the franchise. Sounds like it was all downhill from there.
Also, what is even "the canonical Fallout universe"? I'll admit I never really got into that series, but I do know enough about classic 90s CRPGs to be familiar with it. Properly speaking, I'd say there's two of those universes: the original Interplay one from the late 90s plus New Vegas and the commercialized (read: "bastardized"?) modern Bethesda one. All I've seen from the outside gives me the impression Bethesda basically removed most of the thoughtful and clever elements in favor of the kind of lowest common denominator stuff this blog rightful tends to criticize.
Since we're on the subject, I also can't help take the opportunity to plug one of my absolute critique heroes and favorite internet personalities, the (sadly late) Shamus Young. He brought a very thorough analytical perspective with a lot of humor and warmth, while being merciless on crappy writing. If you haven't already, I think you and the readership here would enjoy his stuff. Especially his magnum opus on the Mass Effect series. On the theme of this post, though, he did this mini-series on modern Fallout: https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=27085
It's true, Bethesda failed to capture the dark humor and wit of the first two games. But it's Bethesda, writing has never been their strong suit. Where they are strong (or were, before the skinsuiting) is in building rich, immersive sandboxes, and in that sense their takes on Fallout were much stronger than the big empty of the CRPGs. I appreciated them both in different ways.
I had a lot of fun playing Fallout 3, New Vegas, and even 4, but the more you thought about any of their stories, the worse they got. Definitely "dumb fun" games.
Yeah Bethesda's games have always been very "make your own fun." But that is good for a sandbox game, and what I like about them. If I want a great story, I go elsewhere.
Supposedly the lead Fallout actor Ella did play some Fallout games.
Arrow was a pretty good DC show on CW. Though, it definitely had its fair share of silly moments. Also, I really liked Fallout. The first couple episodes are a little uneven, but the show greatly improves as it goes on. At any rate, it got me playing (and enjoying) Fallout 76, which was heretofore an inconceivable prospect.
I'm willing to believe Arrow, being a relatively grounded character that's basically just a guy who's really good at archery (as far as I understand it), is probably the best DC CW show by virtue of not having to rely on scads of cheap CGI. Like, I had a lot of people tell me Flash was good but I just could not look past the horrible production quality. Maybe that's just me being a snob, but still.
I won't lie, I actually thought about doing the same, which is... saying a lot for the same reasons. Fortunately my lack of a gaming PC has kept me from indulging, but if I did have one, just being reminded of how much fun I had with the Bethesda Fallout games, imperfect as they are, makes me want to play them again.
I've heard of some of these shows like Full House, Supernatural, etc. but others not much. One show I do like watching reruns of is Little House on the Prairie. It's quite wholesome, especially compared to today's shows. Have you seen LHOTP?
I haven't, no. That was a little too before my time, but I do remember seeing reruns of it on TV Land, I think. I did read the books when I was a kid. I remember having the problem with them I had with most things at that time, which was that it didn't have enough aliens, spaceships, magic, wizards, and things like that to really hook me in. I'm sure both the show and the books are fine and were popular for a reason, but as a kid I was just too much of a sperg to get into it.
Also, while doing research, I did actually see that LHOTP has what's considered to be one of the most controversial endings to a sitcom in television history, which is like... how?
The ending being controversial:
Spoilers obviously is because the plot involved blowing up the town so it wouldn't fall into the hands of a rich tycoon.
Real life reason was because the place where they filmed the outside scenes was on a farm and when they finished filming the land went back to the farm.
Okay... yeah, I can see how that would definitely piss people off. I would also say "blowing up the town" should be up there with "jumping the shark" in tv culture jargon.
Hehe. Yeah, it should. Peace
I have not watched most of these, except Game of Thrones, and I agree with your assessment of that show. The rest I’ll take your word on! The paint by numbers phrase is brilliant, thank you for that and for this whole article which was educational and enjoyable to read. I do not know who Dan is, so I am excited for you to spill the beans next time.
Oh, believe me... by the time we're done, you'll know far, far more about Dan Schneider than you ever wanted to.
🙌😁
Oy Gevalt! I got hoodwinked by the Title, and slogged through the flowering lead up to be stranded on a cliff hanger island. Oy Gevalt!!